Created on January 1st 2003, BluesBlog narrowly escapes the ‘no more than 2.0’ “evil” rule. Perhaps because of its young age, BluesBlog looks somewhat amateurish with it’s simple design and lack of organization. But all is not lost. Far from that.
As the blog title suggests, BluesBlog deals with the Blues genre. A little reading shows that the blog is frequently more concerned with the music scene around Tokyo, Japan, with updates and reviews of gigs aplenty. I find this refreshing and interesting: Instead of reviewing albums, blog owner Les actually visits local performances and reports on them. Also, music fans around Les’ area would benefit a lot by visiting BluesBlog, as there are often pre-announced performance dates.
I feel that as a blog under the ‘Music’ category, BluesBlog has all the ingredients and potential to become an important Blues website with authority. But first, some work has to be done. For starters, I think it would improve the site immensely if Les could separate Blues news, upcoming gigs, performance reviews and personal ramblings. Readers would benefit by finding music information they are seeking easier, instead of having to sift through details about Les’ daily life. Vice versa for readers more interested about Les the person. Seeing that Les has won some awards and is even the 1st Asian Blues Hall of Fame Ambassador, I believe this style of organization will lend a professional feel to the site.
As mentioned earlier, BluesBlog has all the right things to make it an influential and important site for one often overlooked music genre, if worked on. Perhaps with time it will be so.
BluesBlog